Low-Cost Pioneer Was 87
If
you've ever been cramped into a too-small seat on a trans-Atlantic
super-saver fare, you may thank Sigurdur Helgason. And we sincerely
mean that.
Helgason, who passed away February 8 at the age of 87,
revolutionized low-cost airline travel in the 1960s. His airline,
Loftleidir, started budget airline flights from the US to
Scandinavia, via Iceland, in 1955. In the early 1960s, the airline
started service to Luxembourg... which may seem like an odd
destination at first, but since Luxembourg had no national flag
carrier to call its own, it was the only European country to allow
Icelandic flights to land there.
Icelandic wasn't known for its luxury... and that was precisely
the point. During the dawn of the jet age and the birth of speedy
travel between he United States and Europe, Icelandic puttered
along -- figuratively, and literally -- with a fleet of cramped
turboprop airliners. By the end of the 1960s, the carrier had
graduated to a fleet of Douglas DC-8 turbojets... but held onto its
slogan, "We're Slow But We're Low."
It was a mindset the counter-culture, "Flower Children"
generation responded to. By the end of the decade, Icelandic was
known as the "hippie airline," where the odd whiff of marijuana
smoke in the cabin wouldn't necessarily raise any eyebrows. For
that and other reasons, the cramped single-class cabins appealed to
the hostel crowd... particularly since the ultra-low fares also
included decadent meal selections, along with complimentary wine
and cognac.
"We traveled in style even though it was the cheapest flight
across the Atlantic," Sigurdur's daughter Edda Helgason told The
New York Times.
By
the start of the 1970s, Icelandic had garnered two percent of the
trans-Atlantic market... and did so with the apparent ire of the
International Air Transport Association, which collectively frowned
upon Icelandic's unorthodox approach. While Helgason was CEO of
Icelandic, the airline eventually had as many as five daily
departures from New York... and opened up Iceland to a new
generation of travelers and tourists.
Helgason didn't start Icelandic -- the airline was started by
three pilots in 1944. Helgason, then manager of a cement company,
joined the Board of Directors in 1953, and by 1961 he was head of
the airline's US operations. When Icelandic Airlines merged with
another, smaller airline and became Icelandair in 1973, Helgason
returned as CEO... a position he stayed in until 1984, when he
became chairman of the board. He retired from the airline in
1991.
Today, Icelandair has lost much of its counter-culture appeal,
but still carries "five times the population of Iceland," in the
words of Helgason's now-retired successor (who is also named
Sigurdur Helgason.)
That translates to some 1.6 million passengers annually, and
marks Icelandic's success as the only low-cost airline at the time
to have survived today.